[Editor's note: Article was updated 3/28/14 at 10:10PM Central with several edits and grammatical corrections]

It took a decade of discussion and three years of development, but EAW has created a unique, new loudspeaker system with adaptive performance and a personality all of its own. The system is called Anya. EAW says the goal was to create a system that could adapt three-dimensional directivity to match the requirements of any given room and optimize the response across the entire frequency range. Last week in Nashville, EAW did a two-day demo of the Anya system at The Fellowship at Two Rivers church. EAW representatives gave a complete hands-on explanation of the system. Engineers were able to bring their own tracks and mix virtual sound checks and put the system through its paces. I was able to spend four hours listening, talking with reps and mixing on the system. I went into the demo with an open mind, wondering what EAW has been up to for the past few years. When I left thinking EAW may have a real game real changer here.

Walking into the room and looking up at the system I was confronted with the most obvious feature of Anya: the boxes are designed to be hung in a perfectly vertical array. I was confused because this breaks the convention of most line array setups which are often hung in J or banana configuration. What I soon learned is that Anya is capable of 178 degrees of vertical coverage. This means that the system can shoot straight up or down as well as fill up anything in between. Say goodbye to down fills or J arrays.

When EAW set out to create a system with adaptive performance they designed an entirely new speaker architecture. Each Anya box is home to 22 drivers, 22 DSP's, and 22 amps. They consist of 14 x 1-inch high-frequency drivers, 6 x 5-inch mid-frequency drivers and 2 x 15-inch low-frequency drivers. With this design, the array of boxes can hang straight and the Resolution software (free for download at www.eaw.com) controls how Anya will cover the room.

We were provided a demo of the steering capabilities of Anya, which consisted of isolating sound to only the floor, then only to the balcony and then only to the stage. Hearing is believing, so you'll have to take my word when I say I was completely impressed with the Anya's steering capabilities. EAW's stated vertical coverage of 178 degrees seems to be entirely accurate as I stood right below the hang and with just one step out from under the array I could hear HF (high-frequency) content just as clearly as I could from the FOH (front-of-house) position.

It should be noted that while the vertical coverage far exceeds any system I've experienced first hand, Anya's design gives the system 70 degrees of horizontal coverage. This means that for some churches it would be ideal to have two rows of Anya, which when flown side by side delivers 140 degrees of horizontal coverage.

The 14 boxes (seven on each side) in the demo sounded louder than what most churches will need --- and that was without subs. Again, trust me, the low end was amazing.

I was told at the previous day's demo that the system produced 122 dBA. I'm gonna trust them on that, as I don't need to experience that sort of SPL.

When I had a chance to play some of my familiar reference tracks through Anya and walk the room I was very pleased with what I heard. There was even, consistent coverage through out the entire room and up into the balcony. I was also impressed at how the Resolution software and the Anya system worked together to create consistent coverage across the church. The low end hit just right and found myself doing very little EQ to the main output and it seemed to me that most of my desired EQ cuts had to do with the room not the loudspeaker system itself.

Each one of the Anya boxes weights 285 pounds and is hung by 1, 2, 3 or 4 points. And because you don't have to angle the boxes the system can go up in minutes.

Plotting your room and setting up the Anya system looks incredibly simply. Each Anya box has IR transceivers on all four sides. As soon as Anya is powered up, each box starts talking to the others and they calculate their location. That information is transferred into the Resolution software. Resolution only needs the engineer to enter the trim height of the array and the horizontal distances between the array columns before it's ready to start plotting your room.

The next step is to take a test microphone along the perimeter of the room and Anya will create three bursts of sound calculating the arrival time within a few inches. Once you have your perimeter area mapped in Resolution, Anya will then adapt the coverage for the ideal performance in that space.

Coverage is the primary concern with church PA systems. Anya provides a compelling new approach to solving this issue. If your church is considering a new sound system, Anya should be given serious consideration. If it lives up to its promise, you will be able to eliminate a multitude of down fills, side fills, front fills and balcony fills. It could also mean achieving a level of stereo imaging, phase coherency and audio sanity that you never thought possible.